Cinema
Lousy Little Sixpence
Alec Morgan · 1983
Synopsis
Elderly Aboriginal people, Margaret Tucker, Bill Reid, Geraldine Briggs, Flo Caldwell and Violet Shea, recount their childhood on the reserves of New South Wales: school, then the removal of the children, at around thirteen, whom the Aborigines Protection Board placed as domestic servants with white people, under a plan of 1909. These children were supposed to receive six pence in pocket money; many never saw it. The film then follows the resistance that organises itself in the mid-thirties around Jack Patten, with archive newsreels and the voice of the narrator Chicka Dixon.
Context
The film took three years of research, which the director and his co-producer, Gerry Bostock, carried out in two states, with no resources other than their unemployment benefits, searching the National Library for articles, films and photographs. The director was keen to show Aboriginal faces speaking to the camera. Premiered at the Sydney Film Festival, it ran for six weeks in the Dendy cinemas and was very well received, not without incredulity among some viewers. The National Film and Sound Archive restored it in 2023.
Who it is for
A fifty-four-minute documentary in English, made up of interviews and archive footage.
Prizes and reception
For John Baxter, in The Australian, few Australian films have such a calm and ironic passion.
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